I chronicle nonsense, mostly about the news, sometimes about pop culture. If you don't think it's nonsensical, then yell at me in the comments.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Stop with the COSpiracies

Bill Cosby was finally arrested, after 40 years and 50 allegations, of sexual assault. His bail was set and posted. He cannot leave the country. Finally, after a year of Larry Wilmore reminding us the he didn’t forget about that motherfucker, the Pennsylvania Justice System showed that they didn’t forget about the motherfucker did it either.

Now, I’m calling on you, black people, to not deify Bill Cosby. We cannot have another “Support Him No Matter What” situation. We can’t have another OJ. Don’t try to explain away what happened. Don’t accuse the women who came forward of “just wanting money”. Don’t Excuse his actions because “they were from a different time”. Don’t claim that his arrest is a deliberate distraction from recent cases of inequality and/or the Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland cases. And for the love of God, PLEASE stop perpetuating that dick-punchingly inane conspiracy that the White Man™ played a long game to ruin Bill cosby because he wanted to buy NBC.

Just.

Stop.

Our heroes of the past were all human. That means that they were flawed. Michael Jordan is a great basketball player, but he also had a gambling problem. THis does not detract from him being a great basketball player. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a REAL social justice warrior. We’d likely not be where we are now were it not for him. However, he also had a few extramarital affairs. This does not de-legitimize his work to make everyone in this country equal in the eyes of the law, as much as J. Edgar Hoover attempted to make it so. Cosby’s body of work in comedy and entertainment raised some of us, whether it was “I Spy” in the 1960s, “Fat Albert” in the 1970s, or “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World” in the 1980s, or any other work he has done. However, over 50 people have come forward, at risk of their own reputations, to accuse this motherfucker of rape. This is not some infidelity, or a few thousand dollars on games. This non-consensual, drug induced, violation of people’s bodies. He even said in an affidavit that he acquired quaaludes for the purpose of drugging women and having sex with them, so please, if you keep repeating, “innocent until proven guilty”, take a ball peen hammer, and hit yourself in the nuts. If you don’t think that you can do that, please call me, and I will be happy to help you. I have three pairs of steel toe boots.

Over 50 women came forward. Only one case of one victim was seen in court and resulted in a settlement. It is utterly ridiculous to claim that 50 women were only out for money. 50 women, from 50 different walks of life, who never knew each other but have the same story with the same modus operandi, all of a sudden banded together to get money from one person? That makes about as much sense as a Trump presidential election bid, and sadly it is still gaining traction, like a Trump presidential election bid. Both can be stopped, though. You have to use a critical weapon called USING YOUR GODDAMN HEAD. Beverly Johnson didn’t need money. Neither did Tamara Green. Neither did the women who DIDN’T want their names public. The idea of the “devious woman” is as old as the story of Eve, and it needs to end now.

The 1960s and 1970s were a different time, by definition. That does not mean that actions in those times were not wrong. Spousal rape was not first outlawed in the USA until the 1970s, but it was still happening long before a law was on the books. It still wasn’t a nationwide crime until 1993. Drugging women with quaaludes (or any drug) was commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s. It was still by definition non-consensual sex. If a person cannot affirm that she is open to sexual advances, then it is assault, whether the law is on the books or not. The women who came forward did so in droves, uncoordinated, because there is safety in numbers. the blow of the slut-shaming they endure is likely a lessened thanks to their mutual support of each other. The women who didn’t come forward until just now didn’t do it then, because what is happening right now to them would have happened tenfold back then. Their characters are being assassinated by individuals and the media, and Bill Cosby himself. Their histories are being torn asunder, so that people can prove that they were promiscuous and lecherous she-devils. If they so much as kissed a boy on the cheek when they were 8, it will be plastered everywhere. Why would anyone think they would receive justice in an environment like that? And black people, the same thing happens to us when we speak of getting profiled in stores, or being unnecessarily detained or beaten by overzealous officers, or being turned down for a loan or lease. We are battered with questions about what we were wearing, what were we doing, how we were speaking. If we so much as have one picture of us with a Supersoaker in hand or dancing, then our detractors exclaim, “See! They’ve got weapons, and look at the way they’re dancing! They’re thuggish animals!” Time has softened the public’s view of women who come forward to accuse someone of a crime. People actually LISTEN to them, and it is still a minefield. So, black people, if you are placing the blame on the women who came forward “late” at risk of their own reputations and careers, then please staple your mouths shut, and never speak again.

Finally, my dear black people, The conspiracy theories need to stop. Bill Cosby was not arrested to distract us from the Sandra Bland case, or the Tamir Rice case, or any other case. He was arrested in Pennsylvania. Tamir Rice was killed in Ohio. Sandra Bland was killed in Texas. None of these are Pennsylvania. If you think that Cosby’s arrest was an attempt to keep us from focusing on other things, you think that we are as narrow minded and stupid as people have been saying we are since Europeans started colonizing Africa. You insult your own intelligence. We can focus on more than one thing, hoping a serial rapist gets his day in court can be one of those while we’re still fighting to get more transparency and cooperation with our local police and justice departments, so that we don’t have more Tamir Rices and Sandra Blands.

The “distraction” conspiracy theory is nowhere near as mind-numbingly idiotic as the claim that The White Man™ wanted to destroy Cosby because of his failed bid to purchase NBC in the early 1990s. He just didn’t have enough money to do it. That is all. He also ventured to own a stake in ABC, which may have been a conflict of interest. It is amazing what you learn when you research something more than third-rate conspiracy sites. The NBC revenge conspiracy is an insult to actual conspiracies and plots that WERE actually perpetuated to take down successful black people. There is a whole list of them, beginning with mid-Atlantic slave trade. Then there is Jim Crow, the literal burning down of Black Wall Street, the Tuskegee Experiment, and Hoover’s plots to subvert civil rights activists through scandal. But this is not any of them. The only person who conspired to take down Cosby was Cosby’s abject hubris and hyperbolic sense of worth. He took himself down. There is a list of black men who have been in the news, who have done things that the public deems disgraceful, that you’re saying The White Man™ conspired to socially eradicate: Michael Vick, Tiger Woods, Mike Tyson, Cee-Lo Green, Michael Jordan, etc. The problem is that all of these people took themselves down. Vick ran a dog ring. Woods cheated on his wife, Mike Tyson was an abusive husband and was CONVICTED of rape. Cee-Lo Green ADMITTED that he did a Cosby™ on a woman, and then defended himself by further admitting it. Michael Jordan gambled subversively. The White Man™ did not force them to do these things. They did it themselves. If the White Man™ were so intent on bringing down every successful black person, then why is Oprah Winfrey still one of the richest people in the nation? If you think is only black men about which the Man™ is concerned, then why is Denzel Washington still on top of his game, or Will Smith, or Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Magic Johnson (who BEAT HIV)? All of these immensely successful people would be on SKid Row by now. Every time you say, “I’m not defending Cosby, but…” you sound like people who say, “I’m not racist, but…”, and then say immensely racist things.

There is a definite distraction from things important to the black community in the US. It’s these conspiracies that make no sense. Our wages and education are in general very disparate, and we still have the residual racism permeating through society that has a lot of people, even our own people, viewing us as assailants before we’re considered human. But please, harp on about how Cosby is being dragged through the mud because of a failed NBC bid. Keep talking about how his career is ruined, ignoring the lives he ruined. Defend the rapist. Before you do it, please put uranium down your pants. You should not reproduce, and the sterilization procedure should be painful.